Stuff Parisians Like Read online

  Then comes the glory day. Every time, the same magic happens. The nice dresses, the charming church, the beauf uncle . . . Parisians smile. Genuinely. They are happy to be there. For a few minutes. And, slowly but surely, the soothing pleasure that comes with the reassuring ceremonies of life gives way to a new form of excitement. A more Parisian form of excitement that comes with the unconscious treat of encapsulating countless new people and groups into little boxes. Plenty of tiny boxes—usually sealed for life. The excitement is all the greater as all these people are acquaintances of a friend or a family member. Oh, putain, tu l’as vu avec sa cravate l’autre, oh la la, putain, c’est pas possible. (“Oh, putain, check out that guy—can’t believe the tie he’s wearing.”) It is impossible to have more fun than this.

  But a good Parisian wedding also allows Parisian guests to judge while enjoying: the ceremony, the venue, the looks of the guests, the food served. This happens during dinner. Good things come to those who wait.

  The past few years have seen an escalation in the broad category of les discours. Between each course, one, two, or three discours. Every time, the same interrogations flourish around the tables: Alors c’est qui ca? Ah, les amis d’ecole? Il a fait l’ESSEC, lui, c’est ca? Bon, bah ca devrait etre pas mal alors! (“Who are these guys? Oh, friends from grad school? Well, should be quite good then!”) Just like in Roman times, each conversation has only two possible outcomes. One, guests are captivated, smile, laugh, or are touched. Two, discours sucks: polite guests simply look down; cheeky ones look for partners in crime to makes faces at.

  An advanced form of discours is one enriched with a PowerPoint presentation presenting old and funny pictures of the couple. Pictures are certainly powerful allies to the uninspired. But the climax of the discours de mariage is la chanson. Cousins, friends from college, colleagues ... Each coherent group feels a disturbing obligation to come up with a personalized cover of a famous song dedicated to the newlyweds. While some of these songs confine to comic genius, most navigate somewhere between plainly useless and straight-up embarrassing. The moment when a group of friends grabs the microphone and says, “Lili, Nico, on vous a préparé une p’tite chanson” is the moment where Lili for the first time considers running away in the middle of dinner a worthy option.

  The rest of the night is history. Older guests will go to bed early. College friends will get drunk and dance. The rare single friends left will regret the good old days where weddings were a good opportunity to meet people. The process will be debriefed and continued in small groups. Newlyweds will be amazed of how fast the day flew by.

  The next day, everyone will agree that Non, vraiment, c’était super.

  USEFUL TIP: When it comes to discours,“Go strong or go home” sounds likes a wise policy.

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: Ecoute, finalement, c’était hyper sympa le mariage. Ca me saoulait un peu d’y aller, mais vraiment, super cool finalement. A part le DJ, ca, c’était un peu la cata, le reste vraiment, c’était super. (“Listen, in the end, it was a great wedding. I sorta didn’t want to go, but really, it was cool in the end. Other than the DJ, who was a bit of a catastrophe, but really the rest was great.”)

  Le Caramel au Beurre Salé

  Sweet in Paris is guilty. Gently guilty. Sugar carries all the afflictions of decadence. It is coating and fattening, sensual and tempting, enjoyable and slippery. Anything sweet in Paris should therefore be consumed in great moderation. Just enough for the threatening shadow of decadence not to ruin the tender moment of sweet collapse.

  In that unspoken tug-of-war between good and bad, the Parisian found an ally in le caramel au beurre salé. Le caramel au beurre salé is as sweet as it gets. Devilishly so. But in all that sweetness and perversion comes a salvatory adjective, a redeeming flavor: le salé. Taunting and irreverent. Obedient and rebellious. Le salé makes caramel acceptable for the Parisian. It makes indulging almost enjoyable. Salt is one powerful little thing.

  Le caramel au beurre salé was once a bretonne oddity. The uncanny account for the local tradition of salting butter. But its enchanting taste and redemptive qualities made it popular beyond its bigounden nest. Over the past few years, le caramel au beurre salé has become Parisians’ white flag in their inner battle against guilty feelings. Le caramel au beurre salé is now to be found virtually in anything sweet: la glace, les macarons, les bonbons . . . But the Parisian’s favorite expression of it is le bonbon. Le p’tit bonbon. Circumscribed indulgences are small apotheoses to the Parisian. This bonbon is an expert stroke. Expert strokes are something most Parisians end up counting exclusively on their pâtissier for.

  When a Parisian reads Caramel au beurre salé on a dessert menu, he usually bursts with an irrepressible “Oh, caramel au beurre salé . . .” At this point, the odds for the Parisian to give in reach a peak. Salt miraculously washes sugar away, brushes off decadence. The Parisian is freed.

  Amen.

  USEFUL TIP: When it comes to caramel au beurre salé, Henri Le Roux is the man.

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: C’était servi avec une boule de caramel au beurre salé . . . hyper bon! J’adore le caramel au beurre salé. (“It came with a scoop of salted butter caramel ice cream . . . really good stuff. I love salted butter caramel.”)

  The Word Sympa

  In the United States, one can get by with mastering only ten adjectives.

  In Paris, one is enough.

  Sympa, that is. Sympa is the most useful adjective in Paris. Initially, sympa is short for sympathique. Sympa is something that is nice. People, places, moments, activities can all be sympa. Being fantastically noncommittal, sympa grew to become a tremendously popular adjective. Not only can most things be sympa but they usually are. In Paris, there really is only one answer to the question C’était comment?

  Sympa!

  Using it extensively, Parisians managed to empty the word of its very substance: the way it is said gives it its actual meaning. To decipher what a Parisian really thinks of something or someone, it is key to be attentive to the tone of the sympa he will most likely come up with as an answer. Tone and facial expression. Only then will you know a bit more about what the Parisian really thinks.

  Sympa became such a popular adjective in Paris because it sends out messages that the Parisian is happy to convey about himself. Because it’s short for something, sympa is vaguely colloquial, making the Parisian seem vaguely laid back when using it. On top of this, sympa is a fantastic buffer against any form of enthusiasm. Sympa is nice but it is still very far from excellent, génial, exceptionnel, formidable, or fantastique. It is just sympa. By saying something or someone is sympa, the Parisian gives it a good point. But not too good of a point.

  Thank God.

  Parisians could not invent a better word even if they looked for it. Sympa is about the object. It is not about the person who says it. The object exhales. The Parisian is weirdly passive in judging something or someone as sympa. He becomes a mere receptacle for the world he lives in. This posture of passive humility is yet another reason for the popularity of the term. It says, “I judge without judging. Whatever I say, it is not my fault.” Parisians these days love this tepid feeling of social innocence. Flamboyance is long gone.

  Making sympa such a close companion, Parisians mechanically diminished the strength of its original meaning. Thus making phrases like hyper sympa or super sympa major hits. Among younger Parisians, the word sympa is so prevailing that its use deprived of hyper, super, vraiment, or carrément is suspicious.

  If a young Parisian tells you that a place is sympa, he probably doesn’t actually think much of it. With nothing but positive words, Parisian youth downgrades reality.

  Beat that, youngsters from everywhere else.…

  USEFUL TIP: There is no connection whatsoever between sympathique in French and “sympathetic” in English. Faux amis!

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: C’était sympa, mais je suis rentrée tôt, j’étais crevée. (“It was sympa, but I came home early
, I was exhausted.”)

  Sushi

  There are three dimensions to being cool in Paris: owning an iPhone, wearing Converse shoes, and eating sushi—at least twice a week. Failing to fulfill one of these conditions will make the Parisian lame, old, and uncool.

  Over the past two years, sushi has become cool Parisians’ (read under-forty-year-old Parisians’—for most Parisians under forty years old are absolutely convinced of the fact that they are cool) food of choice. If a Parisian eats out for lunch with his colleagues every day, it is simply impossible not to go for sushi at least once a week. Impossible.

  Sushi restaurants have flourished everywhere in Paris. They are usually owned and operated by Chinese people. It is amusing to notice that just like the other two dimensions of cool, sushi in Paris has mostly been made popular by Americans and is mostly made by Chinese people.

  As the Parisian first starts eating sushi, he feels as though he is penetrating the secret and precious world of Japanese gastronomy, New York–style. The thrill of differentiating culinary exploration. He then realizes that sushi seems to be low in fat and rather cheap. So he starts consuming it more regularly—gains confidence. When the Parisian gains confidence, gentle respect and cryptic devotion turn into absurd self-importance and outrageous rudeness.

  In most sushi restaurants in Paris, menus are quite comfortably repetitive and kindly made intelligible with pictures. Parisian men tend to opt for the sushi brochettes menu. Parisian women, in a noble attempt to minimize the caloric impact of their meal, usually favor sashimi. When the Parisian takes someone from province to a sushi restaurant, he will usually order for him and show him how to use chopsticks. The Parisian is well-traveled and always considerate.

  On top of the myriad of Chinese-owned sushi places, Paris has become very big on sushi delivery. Restaurants that deliver are more into marketing and are not operated by Chinese people. Every other Parisian under forty years old orders sushi on Sunday nights.

  Sooner or later, sushi eaters will claim to love Japanese food. La cuisine japonaise, tu vois, c’est hyper fin, moi j’aime beaucoup. (“Japanese cuisine is really refined: I love it.”) Loving Japanese food implies nothing but enjoying sushi. The climax of this culinary escalation is the discovery of Rue Sainte-Anne. La Rue Sainte-Anne is Paris’s little Tokyo: one Japanese restaurant after the other. On his first visit to a Japanese restaurant on Rue Sainte-Anne, the Parisian will enjoy the pioneering excitement of finally entering the world of “real” Japanese food, with “real” Japanese people cooking and waiting tables. On Rue Sainte-Anne, he will start dismissing sushi (ignorant food) and venture like the true explorer he has always been into sobas, udons, okonomiyakis. . . . He will then start taking friends to Rue Sainte-Anne—or more precisely taking them to un p’tit resto japonais que j’adore, tu vas voir (conveniently, that one restaurant is usually the only one he’s been to). Taking friends there, the Parisian will systematically warn them with the hint of condescension that is the real cement of a true Parisian friendship: Attention par contre: c’est du vrai japonais, y a pas de sushi, hein. (“Watch out though, this is real Japanese, no sushi there.”)

  Being beyond yet not over one of the attributes of cool is a very Parisian response to the dictatorship of cool: I’m still cool, but I’m also more than cool.

  If you do the math that makes the Parisian super cool.

  USEFUL TIP: Unless you love lines, don’t try Rue Sainte-Anne on a Saturday night.

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: Oh, hier soir, j’suis resté à la maison, tranquillou, commandé des sushis, rien de spécial. (“Last night I had a quiet night at home, I ordered in sushi, nothing special.”)

  Saying They Like Classical Music

  Though to most Parisians “Quatre Saisons” rings a pizza bell, Rameau has to do with church, and Rossini is a way to prepare meat, Parisians are all big-time into classical music. Classical music is one of the things Parisians are unable not to claim they like. To the question T’écoutes quoi comme musique?, most Parisians will respond saying: Oh, un peu de tout: des conneries à la radio, un peu de chanson française, Brel, Brassens et puis un peu de classique. (“A little bit of everything: pop songs, French songs, Brel, Brassens, and a bit of classical music.”)

  The Parisian at this point never gets more specific. He never shares his love for Bach or Liszt. He never mentions a symphony he never gets tired of. His public effusions for classical music—when elaborated on—are always justified by deep sentences like ça me détend or ça me fait du bien. Parisians never run short of grandiose homages.

  Parisians will never challenge one another when it comes to classical music for they all share the same exact policy about it. This absence of escalation is rather un-Parisian and truly unconscious. Parisians’ appreciation of classical music has been declared and repeated so many times that each Parisian ends up convincing himself that he does indeed like classical music. The fact that he never actually listens to classical music is no reasonable objection to this conviction.

  Each Parisian vividly recalls the three minutes last year on a drive to somewhere when he flipped through radio channels and stopped on classical music. After three minutes, he got bored and moved on. But those three minutes were times of vast satisfaction (to come).

  The more educated the Parisian, the more his cultural references are unconsciously inflated. Saying he likes classical music is just one of the elements of the discreetly shiny cultural outfit the Parisian likes to wear socially: along the same lines, educated Parisians will enjoin their friends and acquaintances to relire such and such author, they will claim to love such and such writer while most likely only read one of his books, or they will pretend to have a deep knowledge of the Jewish culture for they had a Jewish friend in high school. All very much in good faith. Culture is vastly a masquerade in Paris.

  Always a nonchalant one: when he runs across some classical music, it is impossible for the Parisian man not to whistle along.

  In Paris more than anywhere else, silence can really be golden.

  USEFUL TIP: Beautiful classical concerts are held inside the splendid Sainte-Chapelle. Look them up!

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: Ouais, mais en même temps, tu vois, Hitler il adorait Wagner. (“Sure, but at the same time, you know, Hitler loved listening to Wagner.”)

  Le Café Gourmand

  Some questions define countries. Fromage ou dessert? once defined France. But France has changed, making this beautiful question obsolete, and the choice at the end of a meal even easier. For that question has shrunk to a monolithical interrogation: Dessert?

  Modernity certainly comes at a price.

  While dessert is worthy of a question, coffee never is. A meal without coffee in Paris is a bit like a day without alcohol in England. Something rare and peculiar. If there’s a meal, there will be coffee to wrap it up.

  Over the past few decades in Paris, dessert has supplanted cheese, then slowly dessert was supplanted by coffee. Ends of meals are that competitive in Paris. Recently, Parisians started blaming dessert for many of their own problems: dessert has become too pricey, too fattening, too time-consuming. Poor dessert. Meanwhile, coffee was bragging. Self-satisfied. Frequently accompanied with un p’tit chocolat—taunting dessert. Arrogant little thing.

  Le café gourmand is a just attempt to reconcile coffee with dessert. On one plate: an espresso and an assortment of miniature desserts just seem to celebrate the glory of bitterness and sweetness brought together. Colorful and peaceful joy.

  The assortment of desserts that comes with le café gourmand usually includes un mini moelleux au chocolat, une mini crème brûlée, un mini clafoutis, and une petite boule de glace. Mini and sweet is something that satisfies the Parisian. Mini sweet is mini sin.

  The trick of le café gourmand is that, though it is minimum sin, it is maximum indulgence. You have it all. Coffee and dessert. And multiple desserts to top it off. Restaurateurs with le café gourmand become the Parisian’s partners in crime: fla
ttering his social sense of guilt, while stroking discreetly his shameful gourmandise.

  Not sure you want to come across as though you still have room for dessert? Le café gourmand in its plentiful discretion is here for you.

  It is worthy to know, though, that while ordering it for lunch is fully acceptable, ordering it for dinner is much more suspicious: what at lunchtime is viewed by fellow eaters as a charming expression of a sense of soft indulgence becomes in the evening a form of inability to fully enjoy. By some Parisian miracle, time of day started defining whether le café gourmand had a centripetal or centrifugal influence on the self.

  In the end, the surge of cafés gourmands in Parisian bistrots and restaurants teaches us about the evolution of the status of la gourmandise in Paris: vice in the daytime, virtue at night.

  Thank God for long and dark Parisian winters....

  USEFUL TIP: Screw people who make you feel bad for eating dessert.

  SOUND LIKE A PARISIAN: Oh ouais, tiens, un café gourmand, pourquoi pas, tiens! Alors, combien de cafés gourmands? (“Oh sure, café gourmand, why not? Okay, guys, so how many?”)

  L’Ile Saint-Louis

  When it comes to real estate, Parisians tend to settle for good enough. Thankfully enough. For if all Parisians lived where they really wanted to, l’Ile Saint-Louis would most likely drown.

  L’Ile Saint-Louis has it all. It is central but isolated, beautiful but discreet, vibrant but quiet. L’Ile Saint-Louis is the essence of Paris. Its nest. Its most charming smile. No Parisian fails to notice that. Parisians are all irremediably in love with that island. Indefectible love—the type of love you know will never leave you. A love that ends up defining you.